Cowboys and Aliens (2011)

Cowboys and Aliens Synopsis

Blockbuster filmmaker Jon Favreau directs Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford in an event film for summer 2011 that crosses the classic Western with the alien-invasion movie in a blazingly original way: Cowboys & Aliens. Joined by an arsenal of top moviemakers--Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci--he brings an all-new action thriller that will take audiences into the Old West, where a lone cowboy leads an uprising against a terror from beyond our world.

1873. Arizona Territory. A stranger (Craig) with no memory of his past stumbles into the hard desert town of Absolution. The only hint to his history is a mysterious shackle that encircles one wrist. What he discovers is that the people of Absolution don't welcome strangers, and nobody makes a move on its streets unless ordered to do so by the iron--fisted Colonel Dolarhyde (Ford). It's a town that lives in fear.

But Absolution is about to experience fear it can scarcely comprehend as the desolate city is attacked by marauders from the sky. Screaming down with breathtaking velocity and blinding lights to abduct the helpless one by one, these monsters challenge everything the residents have ever known.

Now, the stranger they rejected is their only hope for salvation. As this gunslinger slowly starts to remember who he is and where he's been, he realizes he holds a secret that could give the town a fighting chance against the alien force. With the help of the elusive traveler Ella (Olivia Wilde), he pulls together a posse comprised of former opponents--townsfolk, Dolarhyde and his boys, outlaws and Apache warriors--all in danger of annihilation. United against a common enemy, they will prepare for an epic showdown for survival.

As if Cowboys & Aliens wasn't already enough of a disappointment for Universal, here comes some more bad news. An Austin-based writer named Steven John Busti has filed suit against DreamWorks, Universal Pictures, and producer Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, claiming that they stole the idea for the summer tentpole movie from a comic story he wrote back in 1995.

The quote comes from Movieline’s Jen Yamato, who was in attendance at the Savannah session and documented Meyer’s comments about the studio’s more-recent, high-profile flops. “We make a lot of shitty movies,” Meyer said. “Every one of them breaks my heart.”

Despite a silly title, Cowboys & Aliens had the potential to be one of the summer's big hits. It had Jon Favreau in the director's chair, fresh off helping make an unlikely hit franchise out of Marvel's Iron Man. Its catalogue of screenwriters included the golden-boy pairing of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, as well as former Lost honcho Damon Lindelof. Its cast united badasses of two generations in Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford. It had both cowboys and aliens. Hell, it even threw in the unfair hotness of Olivia Wilde just to run up the score.

We learned two things this weekend. First, Cowboys and Aliens was not a great movie, but it was fun summer schlock that did its job entertaining the few who bothered to go see it. And second, way too many people went to see The Smurfs and every single one of them (you?) should feel disgusted and never be able to see a movie again

If you find Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens lacking in some crucial categories, from on-screen chemistry to gee-whiz imagination, then check out these five films. They all build on the genre elements Favreau samples in Aliens, but they remember how to take things to the next level. And when paired with Favreau’s summer tent pole picture, they just might help fill in the gaps.

Fighting aliens with six-shooters is, apparently the new thing in Hollywood and judging from what we’ve seen from C&A so far, that’s a good thing. We have four clips from Cowboys & Aliens, and they look good. Plus, the have Harrison Ford in a hat. You can’t go wrong with Harrison Ford in a hat.

Oedekerk, who receives a story credit on Favreau’s upcoming film, was going to do a version that suggested the aliens had lived among the native Americans for a while, and trouble occurs when cowboys get their hands on extraterrestrial technology. There's a concept art sketch with a very sexy, “Calamity Jane” inspired cowgirl hog-tying a spiky-backed dinosaur-looking creature.

This past May people had varying opinions about Jon Favreau’s Iron Man 2, but one thing almost universally agreed upon was that Sam Rockwell is about twenty different kinds of awesome. Playing Tony Stark

On paper, the concept of genre mashing sounds fairly basic. Take one style, mix in another, set up the proper battles and go home. If done wrong, the whole thing could be quite the generic affair and, in some ways, exploitative

Last night, Favs started night shoots on his upcoming comic adaptation Cowboys and Aliens starring Harrison Ford, and decided it was a good idea to show us, his loyal followers a glimpse of the western sets

He’s in negotiations for RDJ’s old role, the part of Zeke Johnson. Can Daniel Craig do a cowpoke accent? Or will this be Zeke Johnson by way of James Bond? The film is supposed to be about a group of Apache Indians and Arizona settlers

We've known for a while that Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. were hoping to reunite on Cowboys and Aliens, an adaptation of a graphic novel that's about exactly what it sounds like it's about. But apparently that reunion might be happening a lot sooner